everyone must have an opinion on religion and there own beleifs, so discuss them here. this isnt an excuse to bash other peoples beleifs rather a way of maybe opening peoples minds to other trains of thought. ill post my opinions up after the conversation gets flowing a bit.

I do not beleive in any Gods or religions but that does not mean I definately rule it out. I believe it is unlikely that there is a God but there is still the possibility. Personally I think it's pointless to choose a religion as there are so many about that you can never know whether you are choosing the right one.

The point in rhetorical questions, well I could go into the history of the word rhetoric and it being used as a sign of status and interlect in England a few hundred years ago and how its overuse resulted in its ultimate demise and declassification as a recognised form of 'intelligent' English...but I wont. Oh no wait...sorry

I am an agnostic. It's more a philosophy than a religion. For me that philosophy stretches to my view religion. I think that to believe something in the face of evidence to the contrary, what some call "faith," is bad. It's not something you can completely get rid of, but I try my best. That isn't to say I don't want to believe anything at all, but when evidence is presented that disproves my belief, I need to be open to that evidence.

In the case of religion, I tend not to believe the organized religions, but I'm not an atheist either. There isn't sufficient evidence for or against a higher power in my mind. So I say I don't know, but more importantly, I'm not concerned with it.

"only when the last tree dies, and the last stream is posoined will you realise, you cannot eat money" or something like that anyway. off-subject i know, but it makes me fell big..yeah you heard....big....! my hero...hrmmmm...ME...MYSELF AND COMMANDER COOL,AKA ME! WHAT AM I ON ABOUT!

tempo wrote:The point in rhetorical questions, well I could go into the history of the word rhetoric and it being used as a sign of status and interlect in England a few hundred years ago and how its overuse resulted in its ultimate demise and declassification as a recognised form of 'intelligent' English...but I wont. Oh no wait...sorry

I think religion is good to an extent, but there are limits to what you should to towards and for your faith. If it revolves around morals, and as long as you live your life well, know what's right and wrong that I feel that's fine.

I'm not really a firm believer of a single faith, i.e. set in stone, and feel like I draw ideals and opinions from different faiths. I've seen people from all sorts of cutural communities; and C3's definitely a good example, and it's good to see.

There's a right, there's a wrong and I feel it's acceptable to venture into either path, even the wrong just a bit. But one thing's for sure, I believe as they say - you do good to people and people will do good for you, even if life shits on you every so often.

You're not sure the evidence will ever be found. When you study science as I have (B.S. Astronomy/Astrophysics), you learn very quickly that not every problem is solvable right now. You also learn that a lot of highly respected people not only think it can be solved right now, but have claimed to have done so. You have to look at the "evidence" with a critical eye and often demand proof of the "proof" when it doesn't prove itself.

Again, I was once going to be a scientist. Personal philosophies on these sort of things are very important in making a good scientist. You can try to infer and project to find things you can't immediatly see, but if everything in the universe is set up specifically so you can't find the truth, you would never be able to tell anyway.

The idea of religion that we CAN'T understand it. It's like trying to explain quantom mechanics to someone:

Q: What was there before the Big Bang?

A: Nothing

Q: So how did the Universe get there then?!

A: QUANTAM MECHANICS!

Basically, if there is a chance something CAN happen, there is also a chance it can't. For example, a box exists, but there is also a possibility that this box DOESN'T exist.

So, give an infinite amount of nothing an infinite amount of time to do something, there is a CHANCE that it will do something, just as there is a chance it will do nothing.

So, we have never seen God, we can't be sure he exists, but going on quantam mechanics, the very thing we use to prove there is no God, there is perfectly open logic to God existing, as there is a chance of both eventualities. Too deep...

I'm a christian, I thought I'd tell you about it - its suprising, actually, how many people have heard of christianity but have no idea what it means. What makes christianity different from other religions that believe in a single god, is that we believe that we are saved by Jesus. Every person in the world commits sins and does things that they're not supposed to do, its human nature - God has instructed us how we should live but everyone disobeys him - and for these sins we must all die. So God sent Jesus, a perfect being, to earth, and he died (in the most terrible way possible) in place of all of us, so we can be forgiven and be saved. All we have to do is truly belive it, and repent for our our sins and God will forget all that we've done wrong we'll live forever in heaven. So you might think well thats just all too easy, you can just be as bad as you like and then ask for forgiveness - but you see, there is no reason to sin except its like an addiction. No-one is really truly happy living a sinful life, except we are addicted to it. Its far better living an honest life how got wants you to, and you'll be a lot happier. People, right from when they're born are automatically attracted to disobey what God wants us to do - a lot of people say its the work of the devil. But by becoming a christian you are filled with the holy spirit, which is the spirit of God which lives inside us, guiding us on the right path and away from sin. It dosn't happen instantly, its a slow process, but the more we live as christians the more like Jesus we become. And God is always with us, we can communicate with God and because we belive in Jesus he will always do what we need. We don't deserve to be saved, we're completely unworthy, but God loves us so much and is so kind that he's done this and thats an amazing thing. Because he has such great mercy.

I do not beleive in any Gods or religions but that does not mean I definately rule it out. I believe it is unlikely that there is a God but there is still the possibility. Personally I think it's pointless to choose a religion as there are so many about that you can never know whether you are choosing the right one.

Better no god than a wrong god

So you don't want to pick the wrong god through fear of making God angry? Well don't you think that a being advanced enough to create something so wonderful as the universe, would be understanding if you did make that mistake? If there is a God then he must be so intelligent, he must see everything, and understand if you've gone down the wrong path if you had good intentions.

It would be nice to hear about different religions, if theres anyone else on here who wants to talk about their beliefs it would be interesting. And of course no arguments, christianity, and most religions, promote peace and tolarence of other religions.

TAG wrote:I'm a Christian.Personally, I don't see how the "Bing Bang" or Darwin's theory make sense.

Even if Darwin's theory is true (but why are there still monkeys?), life has to start somewhere. And I don't think an explosion would start it...

IMO(please no arguments and all that. I hate getting into such arguments with others)

Indeed, but the same logic applies to God almighty. Quantam mechanics explains them both, it all links to some 17th century Russian philosphor who made the statement about existance and non-existance both having equal chances. Complicated, but at the end of the day so annoyingly perfect that you can't do anything but agree...

Anyone tries say this:

PERSON1: But how can so much come from nothing?

YOU: Have you ever seen every instance of nothing happening ever, can you be sure that one time in an infinity of time that nothing might become an infinite amount of something.

Everyone has their own personal belief system, and if that system happens to incorporate a God (or more than one!) or other phenomenon, then I guess it's potentially all the more interesting. So long as it works for the individual, and harms no-one else, I see no problems. I do think, however, that people should keep these belief systems personal and private.

That's why Organised Religion has always been such a bugbear to me; particularly in its more extreme, self-righteous forms. To me, Organised Religion is the result of one person's strong, powerful belief system erasing and replacing x number of weak ones, in order to earn itself more credibility, more power. I can see so little benefit; Organised Religion so often breeds the sort of prejudices and hatred that get ingrained into even wider ideologies with devastating lasting effects (look at so many of today's major national/global problems, and too often, you'll see someone else's God grinning at its core).

It's one problem of a great many I have with their concept...but I shall refrain from writing any more on the matter right now. It's getting late...

Personally, I don't see how the "Bing Bang" or Darwin's theory make sense.

Darwin's theory is unfortunately used as the prime example of us evolutionarists - however the guys theory's are OK but are also flawed and some of which now scientifically disproven.

I will add that I have no problem with any religion, but none are IMO logical - though many have great morals that shold be upheld and in that respect I have great views towards many religions.

Anyway we as a race evolved, we started as a base of five protiens one of which now forms every life on this planet.

If a higher being did create us he did not, and this is scientific fact, create life as we are today. What he would have created was the potential for our life - but certainly not Adam and Eve - sorry to pick on Cristianity here, I have great respect for the religion, but it's scientifically wrong.

The simple fact is that we evolved in our ecosystem to what we are today, we were not simply created as we are.

(bit of a pissed post, might have to elaborate what I'm saying tomorrow)

I'm agnostic, leaning towards atheist (correct spelling, Rob F ) I don't believe in a God on the simple grounds of multiple religions. The fact that there are so many religions that differ from each other so greatly, and the fact that between them they have managed to cause almost every major war in human history (with the only exceptions being civil wars...) all just screams out at me as a situation that doesn't work with the concept of higher powers and deitys.

And as for the Big Bang theory, religion suffers nthe same scrutiny. What was there before God? how could God bring himself into existence? If God created the earth 4500 years ago, as one vicar calculated, what was there before this? I once saw a christian website with a diagram that looked a little like this:

infinity(time)infinity

but as anyone with any concept of infinity at all knows, this doesn't make sense at all.

Self conflicting views, unclear and fuzzy interpretation, heinous crimes commited in the name of God (here's looking at you Mr. Bush...), hundereds of factions of the same group of people. I know that Christianity to me is in itself a perverted and skewed belief system withno place in modern society. I'm agnostic. I'm not christian. I know rather more about christianity than any other religion, so I may have picked on it a little, but that entire system just gets me angry.

TAG wrote:I'm a Christian.Personally, I don't see how the "Bing Bang" or Darwin's theory make sense.

Even if Darwin's theory is true (but why are there still monkeys?), life has to start somewhere. And I don't think an explosion would start it...

Well I study physics at university, and the more I study it the more I can see what a wonderful creation it is, how ever it came about. If you go from basic principles like the big bang, and study them and trace it right the way through to intelligent life forming - its all incredably finely tuned. Infact, any slight difference in the universe would mean that life wouldn't exist. Statistically it is totally impossible for it to be a complete accident, and therefore physics proves that there MUST be a creator - and the existance of life MUST have been the purpose of the the universe.

You might not know that Darwin was a christian himself and theres nothing really in his theories that contradict what christians believe. The only thing it contradicts is Genesis, the part of the Bible that describes the creation of the earth - but actually the early part of the Bible, the old testament, is considered to be quite insignificant compared to the new testament which talks about Jesus. Most modern christians believe it was more of a way of describing the creation of the universe to people before our time before we could find a way of describing it for ourselves. God teaches us what we need to know, not everything, and not neccesarily the absolute truth if we don't need to know the truth.

So do I believe Darwin that we came from monkeys? Actually no. But thats not to do with my religion - but the lack of real scientific evidence to prove it. For now I'm perfectly happy to accept the story of Genesis.

If a higher being did create us he did not, and this is scientific fact, create life as we are today. What he would have created was the potential for our life - but certainly not Adam and Eve - sorry to pick on Cristianity here, I have great respect for the religion, but it's scientifically wrong.

I think I've answered what you said as well. Yes it is likely, looking at it now, that God created the potential for life, not how it was described in Genesis - but that dosn't really contradict christianity to any significant level.